2019 Predictions for Science & Technology

As we move into 2019, let’s take a peek at some of the predictions for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and aerospace. NBC News recently did a great article on some of these predictions. Let’s check out some of the highlights:

Major discoveries in planetary science will occur in 2019. Starting with the New Year’s fly-by of Ultima Thule, the farthest fly-by of an object by a spacecraft, followed by (fingers crossed) the first detection of marsquakes by the Insight lander to the collection of samples from two near-Earth asteroids and return of said samples to Earth for analysis. Amazing aerospace discoveries await!

2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, celebrating the 150th anniversary of its discovery. While it might seem 19th century, the periodic table still has scientific relevance in the 21st century, because new elements are still occasionally found. Before the periodic table organized all of nature’s chemical building blocks, minerals from Argentina, like lithium, seemed to have no relation to potassium from Russia. Yet the periodic table shows these elements are cousins, connecting different corners of the world. Incidentally, a cellphone contains 64 elements — nearly half of the periodic table.

A cell phone contains 64 elements! Who knew?

2019 will likely continue recent trends of being a “top 5” record warm year for the planet. It’s not out of the question that the combination of greenhouse gas-contributed warming and El Nino — a warming of waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean — could make 2019 Earth’s warmest year of the record-keeping era.

Climate change is real. We need to do more to makes ourselves reliant on renewable energies and sustainable living.